1. Field of the Invention
It is an object of the present invention to provide the front and/or rear section of vehicle body of motor vehicle with an energy-absorbing, vibration-dampening safety device                to pull the steering wheel out of an area, in which the head, thrown forwards, smashes into it or is propelled backwards by an airbag;        to damp vibrations and lower pre-tensioning forces, imposed on belted passengers, in association with energy absorption and vibration-dampening,        to pre-tension the seat belts (safety belts) up to a predetermined length of seat-belt retraction and, when impact energy is great, to preserve the predetermined length of seat-belt retraction and to release pulling wires of the safety devicein any front or rear crash thus ensuring the survival chance either in co-operation with the front airbag or in case of a failure thereof or in operation with airbag.        
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known in the prior art to provide a motor vehicle with front airbags to softly cushion the head or a safety device to pre-tension the seat belts in co-operation with the airbags while pulling the steering wheel out of a head-injury area in order to avoid head injury. When the head-injury area is violated in a front crash, the upper part of the body of a front-seated or back-seated passenger belted, more particularly slackly belted or unbelted, is propelled forwards into the steering wheel, windshield, dashboard or backrest of the front seat. Recently, conventional safety devices fail to ensure survival chance in the following cases:                When crashing into a MB E200 DT on a highway, a 42-year old driver of 5-month old BMW 5, which is strongly yaw-accelerated, suffers quadriplegia.        In a multi-crash of a 5-year old Ford Mondeo into a barrier and, finally, into a bus near the city of Idstein a 34-year old female driver submarines during which an inflating front airbag, fracturing her front face, forces it into her skull. Falsely deployed side airbags can injure passengers too!        In a crash of a 3.5-month old BMW 328i into another BMW the head of a 34-year old driver, thrown forwards, totally deforms the steering wheel.        The operation of airbags and sensors remains, to a surprising extent, unreliable, thus necessitating recall actions of 6,370 SAAB 9000s, 235,000 Volvo S70s, C70s and C70s, 150,000 MBs, 616,000 Opels, 16,500 VWs, 21,000 VWs, 280,000 BMW 3s, 900,000 AUDI 80s, A4s, A6s and A8s, 5,400 Porsche 911 Carreras and 911 Turbos and, recently, 116,000 Volvo S80s.        Ref. to pp. 178 in German Magazine “AUTO MOTOR und SPORT” issue 12/2002 researchers of Technical University in the city of Aachen found out that over 10% of airbag systems are defective. Within four years two millions of cars were already recalled due to defective airbag systems. Under these circumstances airbag systems pose to passengers a risk of injuries!In order to pre-tension the seat belts, operated by a belt pulley driven by an engine, the members of a release device ref. to DE 3536393 A1 are force-locking connected with each other by a wire (pp. 6/col. 37 to 43), which is activated in the event of deformation of a vehicle member. With the data n=6000 U/min, radius of belt pulley=10 mm and t=20 ms lower than the deployment time of BMW-Frontairbag by 22 ms the formula of seat belt-tension yields a retraction of 20 mm, which is less due to the slip-coefficient of the belt webbing on the belt pulley and due to its elongation and can never meet the requirement for retraction of from 300 to 350 mm.In order to prevent fire the engine is put out of operation by interrupting the gasoline-supply and/or electric circuit. The release device remains ineffective at all.        
Ref. to WO 90/14253 a front bumper consists of a first part, whereto a first row of rollers is transversely attached, a second part, whereto a second row of rollers is transversely attached, and a first strip member, arranged between both rows of rollers. Both ends of the first strip member are rigidly attached to a pair of movable rollers, about which a second strip member is wounded. Both ends of the second strip member, rigidly attached to seat belts of passengers. In a mid-front crash the deflection of the first rollers between the second rollers causes a lateral movement of both movable rollers in opposite direction during which the second strip member tightens both seat belts to a limited extent. In offset-crashes it does not work.
Despite voluminous form the front bumper is unsuited to absorb small energy when colliding into a barrier during parking. The damage on the device as well as on the front section of the vehicle incurs high repair costs.
Ref. to DE 4106480 A1 a clamping device consists of a front tube, fastened to a longitudinal runner, and a rear guide tube, which is fastened to the longitudinal runner and the front portion of which is loosely guided by the front tube, to loosely guide a wire. Under the premise, that the distance between both tubes is shorter, when the front portion is deformed, the wire pre-tensions seat belts of passengers. In real-world front crashes the device is fouled when                the portion of the longitudinal runner together with the device collapses or        the front portion with the device is not deformed while the front portion of the other longitudinal runner without device is deformed.        
Ref. to EP 0234003 A1 a safety device, designed for a vehicle having mid- or rear-engine, has a pair of longitudinal rods, located in a pair of longitudinal runners, one ends of which and the other ends are fastened to the front portions of both longitudinal runners and to two first wires, which are connected to an intermediate wire in connection with two second wires, connected to the belt retractors. In a mid-front crash the deflection of both front portions of the longitudinal rods causes an elongation of both first wires, which are outwardly deflected upon the contact with guide plates of the longitudinal runners. As a result, both second wires activate the belt retractors to pre-tension the seat belts. Due to lack of vibration-dampening energy absorbers and delimiters the passengers are exposed to large acceleration of those rods, strangulation linked to unlimited deflection and whiplash-related oscillations.
Ref. to DE 3627558 C1 three wires of a safety device, activated by an intrusion of the power plant in a mid-front crash, pull the steering wheel out of the head-injury area and pre-tension all seat belts. Unfortunately, the passengers are subjected to severe/fatal injuries resulting from                large acceleration, strangulation and whiplash-related oscillations in real-world mid-front crashes or        failure of the safety device in real-world offset front crashes.        
The deficiencies of the features of DE-OS 1655597, DE 3536393 A1, DE 3736949 A1, DE 4106480 A1, WO 85/01709 and WO 90/14253, respectively, are similar to that of EP 0234003 A1 and DE 3627558 C1
In order to resolve the above-mentioned deficiencies of EP 0234003 A1, DE 3627558 C1, WO 85/01709 A1 and DE 3736949 A1 the proprietor AUDI Corp. has invented a safety device, disclosed in DE 3801347 C2, under a trademark “procon-ten”, an abbreviation for programmed contraction-tension, shown in FIG. 5. In a mid-front crash a rod 201 of the power plant 10 pulls                a wire 208, which pre-tensions via pivots 204, 205, 206 seat belts 64 of all passengers in “SG”-direction and        a wire 209, which pulls via two pivots 204, 205 a steering wheel 90 out of the head-injury area in “SL”-direction during which a collapsible casing 91.1 of the steering column 91, fastened to a dash panel of the passenger compartment, is compressed.Unfortunately, the safety device “procon-ten” incurs a series of drawbacks such as:        
For years R&D work has been focused on                developing compact as well subcompact cars suitable for daily driving to workplace, meeting with customers, resolving the problems of increasing traffic congestion, easily finding a parking lot and lowering the fuel consumption to under 4 1/100km and        improving the passenger protection to pass increasingly strict EU and US-crash tests.A compact car, such as MB (Mercedes Benz) A-Class® with 3.58×1.56×1.72 m, has an extremely short front section, for which the device “procon-ten” is unsuited. In order to enhance survival chance and the energy-absorbing property of longitudinal runners in a mid-front crash the power plant 10, sliding down along the stiff sliding surface (scuttle) 55, is displaced from the engine compartment to underneath the passenger compartment while rear bearings 22, serving as sites of predetermined fracture, are broken, as exemplified in U.S. Pat. No. 5,492,193 and shown in FIGS. 2 and 3. In an offset front crash or in a major mid-front crash this embodiment fails due to fouling the condition that both rear bearings must be broken simultaneously. This and other shortcomings are resolved by features of separation of the power-plant from the front section of the vehicle body and/or by enhanced energy absorption of longitudinal runners in front- or rear crashes, disclosed in DE 19636167 C1, CA 2,236,816 and US-pending patent.        
An Institute of Vehicle Safety, a Department of GDV (Association of German Insurers), in Munich has conducted a research on front crashes, classified into four front crash types one of which, the mid-front crash type, shows a low percentage just 19.3% regarding fatal injuries.
The upper part of body as well as the head are subjected to strong oscillation due to lack of undamped vibration in a front- or rear crash. In the crash tests, carried out by the Institute of Vehicle Safety in co-operation with Technical University in Graz, Austria, to idealize a real-world rear crash, the torso is propelled out of the seat backrest after a lapse of 40 ms (milliseconds) while the initial position of the head remains unchanged. After a lapse of 100 ms the head is accelerated backwards. After a lapse of 130 ms the head comes into contact with the head rest. The pitch acceleration reaches the maximum. A rebound (repetition of forward motion) of the upper part of body occurs within 200 ms. Despite low speed at 8.5 km/h and low acceleration at 2.5 g in the crash tests of nine different vehicle seats the upper part of body always oscillates. One out of 22 volunteers suffers minor cervical injury, lasting for two days, and a few minor pain, lasting for one to two days.
Due to poor energy-absorption of the rod 201 of the power-plant, far less than that of both deformable longitudinal runners having a peak acceleration of 60 m/s2, disclosed in DE 3826958 A1, and due to great remaining impact energy, when crashing at high speeds into the very stiff column of a highway, the power plant intrudes into the passenger compartment and the seat belts, strongly pulled by the wire 208, strangulate all restrained passengers, particularly, a fetus of pregnant female passenger.
The rod 201 has to carry out five operations to limit the backward movement of the power plant, to absorb impact energy, to serve as the third bearing of the power plant, to adjust the wire and to convert the movement of the power plant into a movement of both wires. The failure of the device is due to the controversy of the different operations.
Ref. to DE 4224489 A1, whose features are found in AUDI A8 as well as A2, and DE 3826958 A1 a deformable longitudinal runner with a length of “LE”, shown in FIG. 10, is subdivided into “n+1” longitudinal members “Z1, Z2, . . . , Za, . . . , Zb, . . . , Zc, . . . , Zd, . . . , Zn, Zn+1”. The longitudinal member “Zn+1”, having the largest stiffness, is the rear portion of the longitudinal runner, facing the passenger compartment.
Furthermore, DE 19615985 C1 (CA 2,249,667) and DE 19636167 C1 (CA 2,236,816 and US-pending patent) teach the stiffness of the longitudinal runner can be increased by additional elements integrating therein. Controllable deformation behaviour is accomplished by unequal stiffness of juxtaposed longitudinal members, under load, having different peak stresses. However, they may have peak stresses at the same level as long as their longitudinal members, for example, “Z2” and “Z10” are not in juxtaposition. The transient times to the yield value (fracture stress) are variable, hence, determinable. To resolve the problem of buckling of conventional longitudinal runner under great load and to achieve the highest efficiency of the energy absorption the deformable longitudinal runner, guided by the piston rod, is controllably folded, buckled and reamed by a cone- or torus-shaped hub 5.3 of piston head 5.1a, shown in FIG. 6.